Month: March 2023

Southern Company has been named the top utility on Forbes magazine’s Best Large Employers in America 2023 rankings. Southern Company ranked nearly 100 places higher than the next peer company listed in the Utilities group by Forbes. Of the 500 large employers ranked, Southern Company was No. 15 overall. This is the second consecutive year Southern Company has been ranked in the top 15.

“Southern Company strives to be an industry leader. Being recognized among the best in the nation once again is an absolute honor,” said Southern Company chairman, president and CEO Tom Fanning. “This accolade is particularly gratifying because it is directly based on employee feedback. Southern Company is committed to creating a workplace where all groups are well represented, included and fairly treated within all levels of the organization and that everyone feels welcomed, valued and respected.”

Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista to anonymously survey approximately 45,000 Americans working for businesses with at least 5,000 employees. Participants were asked to rate their willingness to recommend their own employers to friends and family and to nominate organizations other than their own. The final list ranks the 500 large employers that received the most recommendations.

For complete large business rankings, read more about Forbes’ 2023 America’s Best Large Employers.

Name: Yu-Ting (Eileen) Lo

Company: Antea Group

Connect with Eileen on LinkedIn

Welcome to our series aimed at spotlighting the individual leaders within BIER member companies and stakeholder organizations. Learn how these practitioners and their companies are addressing pressing challenges around water, energy, agriculture, climate change, and what inspires each of them to advance environmental sustainability in the beverage sector and collectively, overall.

Briefly describe your role and responsibilities and how long you have worked with your company. 

I’m a senior project manager on the corporate reporting and disclosure team with Antea Group USA. Primarily, I support sustainable reporting projects, which include helping clients write their annual ESG reports, develop their reporting strategy, and support third-party sustainability questionnaire responses. I also support the BIER Benchmarking Study workstream. I contributed to the 2021 Water and Energy Use Benchmarking Study, and I’m working on the 2023 Benchmarking study now.

How has the benchmarking evolved over the years, and what are your specific priorities for 2023?

Originally the BIER benchmarking report focused only on water and energy performance. Over time and because of increasing importance and discussions regarding climate change, the BIER members expressed an interest in including scope 1 and 2 emissions in the benchmark report. Within the 2021 study, we looked at water, energy, and emissions metrics for global beverage facilities. We classified those facilities by their facility types, for instance, bottling facilities, wineries, distilleries, and breweries. In doing so, we provided the participating members with a global view of what the overall beverage industry performance looks like while also helping them to understand the sustainability performance of each facility type.

From my perspective, I think members are increasingly interested in what the best practices are for those top-performing facilities. In 2022, we took a further step from the 2021 benchmarking study and conducted a best-in-class analysis. In doing so, we took a deeper dive into those members with top-performing facilities and then tried to understand what are some of the technologies, tactics, or programs that they have in place that support them in improving and achieving higher performance among their peers.

For the upcoming benchmark report, we are in the final stages of defining what will be the key objectives of this benchmarking study. I think there are opportunities to collect additional qualitative information regarding how efficiency is being tracked and monitored and what strategies support members’ efficiency goals and sustainability programs.

Learn more about Eileen Lo in this BIER Stakeholder Spotlight.

Global climate change is a driving force behind the growing urgency across all industries to embrace more substantial environmental, social, and governance initiatives. This year will see several new ESG-focused environmental and financial reporting regulations take effect in major markets around the world.

As an innovation leader, the tech industry is set to take a more prominent role in ESG spaces. Let’s take a look at what’s happening now and what’s coming next for ESG in the tech industry.

ESG: A Quick Overview

ESG is a framework for evaluating the health and sustainability of an organization based on environmental, social, and governance factors.

Environmental: Impacts on the natural world, such as carbon footprint, sustainability initiatives, and adherence to applicable environmental regulations.

Social: Impacts on people, such as diversity and inclusion programs, corporate/community relationships, adherence to labor laws, and humanitarian labor practices.

Governance: How an organization is run, such as the composition of the board, executive compensation, and whistleblower protections.

ESG and the Tech Industry

The tech industry has already been making an impact in ESG spaces. Tech giants Apple and Salesforce were among those requesting more stringent regulations around ESG reporting.

While on the surface an industry requesting more regulation may seem counter-intuitive, the tech sector does stand to benefit from driving ESG forward, in terms of appeal to both investors and consumers.

The future of investment is ESG

ESG-rated investment funds have performed well in spite of recent market concerns, and organizations that have already done the hard work of achieving an ESG rating are ready to compete in the new ESG-focused capital market.

This competition will pick up soon. The SEC’s climate disclosure regulation is slated to come online in 2023 and includes disclosure of Scope 3 emissions, which are emissions that originate from upstream and downstream activities in the value chain.

What does this mean for the tech industry? To remain competitive, tech companies that offer digital solutions will need to have a strong ESG rating so they don’t impact the Scope 3 emissions of the companies that use their software or service.

Improving infrastructure & efficiency in data

Scrutiny of the tech sector’s environmental and social impact has made headlines recently, with reports of excess water and energy use to sustain data centers.

In response to skyrocketing demand for data center facilities and the subsequent expansion of their carbon footprint, tech industry leaders are working on creating solutions that will enable data expansion in more efficient ways.

These initiatives include:

The European Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, which pledges to make data centers climate-neutral by 2030.The Open Compute Project, which is working to redesign hardware technology to increase computing efficiency.The 24/7 Carbon-free Energy Compact, a project of the United Nations and Sustainable Energy for All, signed by Google, Microsoft, and Iron Mountain.DIMPACT, a project by Carnstone and the University of Bristol that measures and reports the carbon footprint of digital services.

Governments are also investing in improved infrastructure, with the US Department of Energy announcing $42 million to aid in the development of more energy-efficient cooling systems. 

Diversity in the Tech Industry

While the environmental component in ESG typically receives outsized attention, the social factors are just as important for the well-being of global citizens.

The tech sector has made strides in recent years to address diversity disparities, but with the recent volume of layoffs by major tech companies, those gains are at risk of being erased.

Reporting by Reuters revealed that job losses between September and December of 2022 impacted women and Latinos at a higher rate, with tech employees belonging to these minority groups making up 46.64% and 11.49% of the tech layoffs respectively.

Even prior to the layoffs, a study by S&P Global found that one in three women in tech reported being sexually harassed in the workplace, signaling a need for improvement in workplace culture within the tech sector.

Moving forward, tech leaders will need to evaluate the alignment of their diversity policies and hiring practices in light of their ESG targets.

How Tech Innovation Can Drive ESG for All

One of the greatest opportunities for the tech industry at this moment lies in creating the next generation of technology that can curb climate change and improve systems used to combat existing consequences.

Alongside improved green energy storage and technology used to combat forest fires with AI and machine learning-powered drones, there are opportunities for tech to help other industries reach their ESG goals.

The analysis, reporting, and storage of ESG-related data present a problem for many industries – one that tech can resolve. A recent McKinsey report on the impact of ESG in banking cited an opportunity for tech to make a significant difference. “Banks must adapt their IT systems to systematically collect, aggregate, and report on a broad range of ESG data.”

As Microsoft President Brad Smith recently noted, “Cloud-based digital services, the better use of data, and rapid advances in AI will create new opportunities for us to help every organization achieve more progress in addressing the world’s climate and energy needs.”

To learn more about the impacts of ESG in the tech industry and how your business can prepare, connect with our team of experts today. 

The global water crisis continues to churn, with climate change driving unforeseen weather conditions that have led to droughts, floods, and damaging storms. The urgency of the moment is reflected in the headlines: Record flooding in California has given the drought-stricken state a temporary reprieve; France and Italy are bracing for water scarcity this growing season after a lackluster snow total this winter; and the EPA has proposed new limits to the amount of PFAS in municipal drinking water. 

At the heart of each of those headlines is the same topic: water stewardship.

How we care for our water will significantly impact the global community across the coming decades. Fortunately, there are already organizations who are committed to being strong stewards of our most precious natural resource. 

As we observe World Water Day this year, we wanted to focus our attention on the good work being done by corporations committed to water stewardship. 
 

The CEO Water Mandate

In the summer of 2007, a group of corporate executives met at a UN Leaders Summit and launched the CEO Water Mandate, an initiative that brought private and public entities together “with a focus on developing strategies and solutions to contribute positively to the emerging global water crisis.” 

Since its inception, 240 member organizations of the UN Global Compact have endorsed the visions and objectives of the CEO Water Mandate. These companies have agreed to review water usage within their organizations as it relates to direct operations, supply chain, and watershed management. 

This is just one of the actions spurring corporate leaders around the globe to take ownership of their role in ensuring access to safe, clean water. 
 

The Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS)

The AWS Standard was developed through a four-year global, multi-stakeholder consultation seeking a framework that could be implemented by any site, in any sector, in any catchment around the world.

AWS is a global membership collaboration comprising businesses, NGOs and the public sector. They contribute to the sustainability of local water-resources through their adoption and promotion of a universal framework for the sustainable use of water – the International Water Stewardship Standard, or AWS Standard – that drives, recognizes and rewards good water stewardship performance. Their mission is to ignite and nurture global and local leadership in credible water stewardship that recognizes and secures the social, cultural, environmental and economic value of freshwater. Our global Associates and many multi-national corporations use this framework, and Inogen Alliance is an official sponsor of the AWS Forum event in Scotland. 
 

Leaders in Corporate Water Stewardship

From a broad range of industries, these leaders are demonstrating that corporations can enact policies and practices that make a difference. 
 

1. Anheuser-Busch

Industry: Beverage

Location: United States 

What they’re doing: As a beverage company, Anheuser-Busch understands the importance of drinkable water, both at the corporate and community level. They have committed to improving watersheds in the communities around the globe where they have a presence, ensuring the security and longevity of aquifers they access, and helping others who access those same resources enact more sustainable practices, such as converting local farms to drip irrigation solutions that use water more efficiently.

2. General Mills

Industry: Food Producers

Location: United States

What they’re doing: General Mills has launched a regenerative agriculture pilot program in the state of Kansas. In conjunction with Ecotone Analytics, they conducted an impact study to determine the social return on investment for the project. The findings show an incredible 400% return, with benefits including reduced soil erosion, increased carbon sequestration, and improved surface water quality.

 

3. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)

Industry: Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology

Location: United Kingdom

What they’re doing: Working with the Water Resilience Coalition, GSK has identified eight water basins in water-stressed regions where they have a presence, and are working toward water neutrality at those locations. Their site in Cape Town, South Africa, has reduced water usage from the municipal supply by 12% over five years. GSK has a goal of being completely water neutral at their own operations and within key suppliers in stressed regions by 2030.

 

4. Woolworths Holdings

Industry: General Retailers

Location: South Africa

What they’re doing: Cotton is a significant resource for Woolworth’s fashion divisions. As such, they have committed to reducing water waste across their value chain by working with farmers to enact sustainable cotton farming practices through organizations such as Better Cotton, which “promote the usage of less water and fewer chemicals when growing and harvesting the cotton.”

There are also a great number of chemicals used in the production of textiles – some quite hazardous, which threaten water quality. Woolworths has eliminated hazardous chemicals from 97% of their products, including textiles.

 

5. Kurita Water Industries Ltd.

Industry: Industrial Engineering

Location: Japan

What they’re doing: Kurita is at the forefront of water stewardship, having had a hand in water treatment since the 1950s. They have committed to reducing water waste for their customers through innovation and systems that more efficiently circulate water as well as wastewater collection and cleaning. They have optimized a water recovery treatment process that enabled them to recover 70% of the water used in certain processes.

 

6. Coca-Cola Company

Industry: Beverages

Location: United States

What they’re doing: In 2009 Coca-Cola launched the RAIN program, developing a network of more than 300 public and private partners working to address water needs at the community level. Since then, RAIN has worked on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) projects that have impacted the lives of 6 million people across 41 countries and territories. Their key focus is on watershed protection, productive use of water, and WASH access.

 

7. Danone

Industry: Food Producers

Location: France

What they’re doing: Danone has also taken a localized approach to water stewardship. Based on analysis of local water cycles by hydrogeological experts deployed in areas deemed a priority for water conservation, they have been able to create site-specific action plans that:

Preserve water resources throughout its value chain.Rethink circularity within and around the production sites.Provide access to safe drinking water for vulnerable people and communities.

One of their first steps is working in partnership with farmers to promote regenerative agriculture practices that foster healthy ecosystems and work with the local watershed.

 

8. Levi-Strauss

Industry: Personal Goods

Location: United States

What they’re doing: Levi-Strauss has been working since 2010 on their Water<Less® initiative, which optimizes water use in apparel production. They also are working collaboratively with other organizations in their industry and beyond by sharing their Water Action Strategy open-source. 

Their 2025 Water Action Strategy includes goals to create water usage efficiencies across all operations, not simply those in water-stress regions.

 

9. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)

Industry: Travel & Leisure

Location: United Kingdom

What they’re doing: As a member of the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), IHG has been able to work collaboratively with other organizations to “collectively advance water stewardship and preserve the world’s fresh water.” Their hotels have seen a reduction in water usage, and in 2021, they worked with Water.org to deliver quality access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for communities in India, Indonesia, and Mexico. 
 

10. Ecolab

Industry: Support Services

Location: United States

What they’re doing: As an industry steeped in water-related products and services, Ecolab has long been tuned in to the global need for waste reduction and water conservation. As founding members of the Water Resilience Coalition and the Alliance for Water Stewardship, Ecolab strives to work not only internally but with customers as well to improve water use efficiencies. In 2021 alone, Ecolab worked with their customers to conserve more than 215 billion gallons of water. 

Ecolab’s goal is to restore more than 50% of their total water withdrawal by 2030. 

11. Kimberly-Clark

Industry: Paper-based products

Location: United States

What they’re doing: Kimberly-Clark mills require considerable amounts of water for the production of their paper-based consumer goods. High water demands coupled with Kimberly-Clark’s ambitious water security milestones have led to the development of WaterLOUPE, an innovative, open-source water-risk and water availability screening tool, which aims to be rolled out to all manufacturing facilities as well as local watershed Stakeholders.

12. L’Oréal

Industry: Cosmetics

Location: France

What they’re doing: As one of the largest cosmetics companies in the world, l’Oréal has also been amongst the leading companies in the sector to promote innovative water-reduction strategies. By launching the concept of a dry factory, in which potable water is used only in the composition of the products and for human consumption, by 2030 l’Oréal aims to recycle and reuse water used in industrial processes by 100%. Currently, l’Oréal has three dry factories at Burgos in Spain, Vorsino in Russia, and Settimo Torinese in Italy, all of which are inspiring ideas for other plants around the world.

 

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Originally published by Ericsson

The ever-increasing demand for data combined with a need to reduce energy consumption to reach Net Zero presents new challenges for network operators.Ericsson experts have found that efficient monitoring and tracking supported by revolutionary AI can identify optimization areas to reduce RAN energy use by up to 12 percent annually.Below, we walk you through our ML-based recommendation engine that generates energy-efficient configuration settings for network nodes.

At present cellular operators are seeking to reduce an ever-increasing energy bill which accounts for 5-7 percent of their operating expenditure. At the same time, in the coming years with more countries moving to 5G, like enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) and massive machine type communications (mMTC) may require more sites, in turn negating some of the gains obtained via energy efficient parameter configuration. In addition, any measure that operators take in terms of reduced energy consumption should not impact the network performance or any of the service level agreements for these.

Energy efficiency at the RAN

Each LTE and 5G radio transmitter consumes electric power to control and transmit shared channels for user data and broadcast channels for control information. Shared channels consume slightly less electric power when user traffic is low, but broadcast channels and control circuits always consume constant power. There are means to disable or shut down cells and wake them up when required according to pre-configured scheduling parameters, but they do not consider or adapt to the subscriber experience impact of disabling these entities. AI/ML mechanisms are required to dynamically learn, adapt and act upon the best balance of power savings and subscriber experience at each cell site and radio.

Operators are already adjusting radio network requirements (such as added layers of spectrum, cell density and associated energy costs) to keep up with peak capacity demands. But much of this incremental investment is under-utilized and inefficient when demand is below peak. There is a need to reconfigure and control cells dynamically, to serve dynamic traffic patterns, not just peak traffic.

The sites and cells deployed in a network may be classified as underlaid (coverage) and overlaid (capacity). When an overlaid capacity cell is turned off, the traffic load existing in the overlaid cell is offloaded to underlaid (coverage) cells. The underlaid (coverage) cell monitors traffic conditions and key performance measures like access to the network, service quality, retainability and mobility to allow the overlaid (capacity) cell to go into sleep mode and turn on the sleeping cells when required. Once overlaid cells are turned off for energy saving reasons, the reference signal interference in the network is also reduced, improving UE throughput, and reducing operating expenditure. This phenomenon of sleeping cells with generic and static configured parameter thresholds may result in coverage loss or not using the spectrum efficiently with no optimum energy saving. This capability of cell sleep and wake up detection should be adaptive to network traffic conditions, radio resources availability, user density, service usage, user experience and overall network performance to provide best energy efficiency.

One size does not fit all

It is a known fact that the radio access network (RAN) accounts for nearly about 80- 85 percent of overall energy consumption. Depending on the geographical location and varying data traffic loads, it would be wise to put some of the capacity cells into sleep and wake them based on the traffic demand. The image below shows a cluster of cells with different energy consumption in accordance with user and network activity and depicts how not all cells need the same energy to meet the traffic demand.

This calls for having a customized approach for each capacity cell to be in a sleep or awake state. An ML/AI based approach expands the potential for such energy-saving opportunities across the network at cell level. One of the solutions is enabling dynamic thresholds configuration for cell sleep mode for coverage & capacity.

AI based dynamic thresholds for cell sleep mode

Enabling and controlling the cell sleep mode based on the physical resource block (PRB) utilization and RRC connection-based thresholds, without impacting the customer experience, needs a careful monitoring of key performance scenarios like network availability, reliability, traffic pattern, services offered and spectrum usage, while considering same of neighboring cells as well. To achieve this, it is important to determine the utilization of each cell layer for the next few days and, most importantly, to determine the impact on customer experience for the same period.

One example is a renowned CSP that was exploring avenues to optimize RAN energy consumption without degrading network performance and customer experience. In the current scenario Ericsson provides static thresholds to be set manually through the cell sleep mode feature, however, the team proposed setting thresholds dynamically. To determine the values for this threshold dynamically, it was necessary to conduct field experiments on a live network as there was no variation in data due to static nature in CSM.

The image above portrays the following:

1. High Level Solution: Energy consumption forecasting model

2. Methodology: Optimal configuration threshold grid search model

3. Model Fitting: Threshold validation on live network

4. Optimised Scenario: Impact analysis

The forecasting model predicts energy consumption levels per cell for a day in advance. It provides an idea for the optimization model for possible improvements in terms of various performance KPIs like accessibility (QCI9, QCI5 & QCI1), retainability, mobility, latency, throughput and traffic volume.

The optimization model determines the dynamic threshold at cell level at which a capacity cell should be awakened or put to sleep based on RRC Connections and PRB Utilization. In this case, it was considered as a convex optimization problem, with the objective function to maximize the sleep hours subjected to various constraints like business constraints (for example user experience or operational expenditure) or technical constraints (such as accessibility during coverage hole detection, drop call rate, average sector loading, location estimation, mobility, and lower latency handling in case of URLLC use cases).

Impact of the solution

Target exceeded: 10-12 percent energy reduction across pilot sitesNo degradation in RRC, ERAB Success Rate and Call Drop Rate across all bandsStable traffic volume, mobility success rate and latencyStable DL/UL Throughput and other primary KPIs against historical trend

Our research shows a few more areas that operators can focus on reducing energy consumption

MIMO Sleep: ML-enabled MIMO path and radio head control for energy savings using optimal MIMO configuration resulting in optimal power efficiency and performance balance for various traffic conditions. This learns power savings and network performance under various traffic loads, then activates and deactivates MIMO paths according to trained models.IoT based energy optimization: Smart Homes, Smart Factories & equipments, Smart Health monitoring, shipping & Logistics etc., are utilizing various interconnected devices to autonomously manage intent operations, which consumes a lot of energy, resulting in a need for energy optimization. A function of IoT devices is to reliably collect and share the perceived data with the physical world. The hardware element of the IoT device consists of a battery-powered sensor, an actuator, and a communication system. IoT sensors, cloud computing technologies and the telco network with the help of AI based techniques (events and data driven), improve productivity and energy efficiency.Smart green sourcing: Green Sourcing refers to the purchase of goods and services that cause minimal adverse environmental impact. The demand for recyclable products, energy-efficient systems, and clean technology and fuels is driving the adoption of ecologically responsible business norms. In green sourcing, concerns about environmental impact are given weight over other business decisions to reduce pollution. Sunsetting legacy systems and equipment is key in bringing sustainable smart green sourcing.Machine learning algorithms for HetNet traffic pattern: Energy-aware platforms analyze events through AI/ML and reinforcement learning (RL), to allow proactive energy savings coupled with reduced CO2 emissions in Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) architecture. Advanced frameworks for optimally handling the switching on or off of sleeping cells, in case of low latency services without impacting the QoS, take mobility prediction, UE location estimation and network environment into consideration.

Summary

The dynamic threshold for cell sleep mode is a unique solution that can be adapted by any operator. This solution can be used for optimal gains in energy consumption across the network. Making use of the huge volumes of data pertaining to attempts, handover and real-time demand, this ML-based approach enables highly efficient, fast, and automated decisions on the RAN components that can be put into sleep mode, thereby saving energy. The estimated energy-saving using this AI solution is up to 10-12% for some operators, in addition to any other savings that are gained from site-level efficiency measure.

Read more

How AI can reduce network energy costs

How to scale 5G to meet increasing data demands while still addressing energy concerns